From The Washington Post, an opinion article by Richard Cohen. On the night of Nov. 28, 2001, crack homicide detectives fanned out all over New York City, one of them even going as far as New Jersey. In all, five detectives from the Manhattan South Homicide Task Force went to the homes of various suspects, fingerprinted some of them, interrogated all of them and told a few that they would have to take lie detector tests. The horrific crime? The police commissioner's friend was missing some items. The commish at the time was Bernard B. Kerik, who just the other day was nominated by George W. Bush to be the next head of the vast Department of Homeland Security. The crime victim was Judith Regan, a publisher at HarperCollins, whose imprint, Regan Books, was publishing Kerik's autobiography, The Lost Son. .... The Manhattan South homicide cops were working for Kerik. Regan's items apparently went AWOL from a studio at Fox News Channel, where she also worked. They included a cell phone, a necklace and a credit card. All the items were later accounted for. The necklace was found at the bottom of her handbag. The credit card had been left behind at a drugstore. As for the phone, it was later found in a trash basket ....
Right up front I should state that Kerik has always maintained that he had nothing to do with making homicide cops lost-and-found monitors. It's possible. Sometimes you don't have to order subordinates to do something. They just do it to please the boss. .... For some reason, the Fox employees initially had a different take. They accused Kerik of abusing his authority and hired a lawyer, Robert M. Simels, who notified the city that he was about to sue. In the end he did not, because the employees dropped the matter. ....
Back in the 1980s, Kerik was working as chief of investigations for a hospital complex in Saudi Arabia, where he allegedly abused his authority to delve into the private lives of women with whom his boss was romantically involved. .... another [allegation] ... says that Kerik "blocked the promotion of a qualified jail supervisor" because the man had reprimanded a female corrections officer Kerik had dated. .... As homeland security czar, Kerik will have plenty of police authority -- everything from border and transportation security to the Coast Guard and the Secret Service. ... we really don't want a person who is tone-deaf to civil liberties and who is apt to send his guys out into the night on armed errands for his pals. What is needed, actually, is a top-notch administrator, a guy with a spreadsheet who can manage this huge and unwieldy department. President Bush, though, has chosen Kerik. ... it could also be that Kerik cuts too many corners, that he has a certain understandable infatuation with his own image and a tendency to bully. Whatever the case, until these questions are answered, the proposed head of homeland security is making me, for one, feel anything but secure.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
12/09/2004 8:36:27 AM ||
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#1
This is the best you could do, Mike? The Dhimmicrat slime machine has really fallen on hard times.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
12/09/2004 8:59 Comments ||
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#2
A guy with a SPREADSHEET??!!?????
Wonderful. Security brought you by the B-school brigade.
Posted by: too true ||
12/09/2004 9:44 Comments ||
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#4
Sid Vicious Blumenthal has a Kerik-hitpiece in the Al-Guardian as well. The Dem meme requires some bogeyman, and Ashkkkroft is going away....
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/09/2004 12:01 Comments ||
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#5
Cohen's bloviating but the larger point here is correct: this is not a job for an ass-kicker a la Rumsfeld. Dir of DHS has no real authority; he's basically a beltway version of Kofi, and needs superb inside baseball skills. Kerik's a very weird choice for this uber-bureaucratic post.
Unless Rove thinks New York state is now in play...
#8
Giuliani's reported by CNN to have made two direct pitches to the White House. And Giuliani's been publicly lobbying for this on the talk shows as well, most recently on Imus.
#10
Actually, Kerik now resides in New Jersey. Corzine will run for governor so a senate seat will open up in 06. Could be.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
12/09/2004 12:39 Comments ||
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#11
Dir of DHS is the shittiest job in Washington. Ridge's career has been blighted by his DHS tenure-- in fact, he's probably finished politically. No one would take on DHS unless there were some other political game afoot.
Did Ridge have inside baseball skills necessary to run DHS? Who would you suggest does?
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
12/09/2004 13:59 Comments ||
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#13
Looks like I'm a contrarian today all over RB.
It remains to be seen how Kerik will do at DHS, but I'm not inclined to write him off before he even gets started. He has a history of successfully motivating law enforcement types while overcoming turf protectiveness and holding people directly accountable for what happens under their responsibilities.
Oh, yeah - one tool he used was a set of detailed statistical performance measures that were carefully chosen to get at the heart of what needed doing in NYC. A spreadsheet guy after all - but one who could use those numbers effectively.
Washington is a broader, harder challenge, but it's more than premature to suggest Kerik is a wierd choice for DHS ... in many ways his performance in NYC suits him for this job much better than Ridge's ever did.
Posted by: too true ||
12/09/2004 15:20 Comments ||
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Did Ridge have inside baseball skills necessary to run DHS?
No, but he didn't completely f--- up. I think it's probably an impossible job. Anyone qualified to tackle this job is too smart to take it. It's a poisoned chalice.
Who would you suggest does?
A cunning, ruthless, and preferably unscrupulous Beltway insider with experience on the Hill and in Cabinet-level or a White House chief of staff capacity. Cheney would be ideal.
#15
Cheney also because he's discreet, unlike Rummy. It's not a bully pulpit. I suppose the best thing about Kerik is his understanding of first-responders. They're the truly important link here. I doubt he'll break through the institutional idiocy of the INS (or whatever it's called these days).
#16
A cunning, ruthless, and preferably unscrupulous Beltway insider with experience on the Hill and in Cabinet-level or a White House chief of staff capacity. Cheney would be ideal.
and what makes you think Cheney won't be available to mentor Kerik? Two birds with one stone .... prep Kerik for bigger things.
Posted by: too true ||
12/09/2004 16:04 Comments ||
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Cheney's not got enough to do in his day job?
Hugh Hewitt's analysis supports my initial suspicion that this is a favor to Giuliani, who's gaining traction among solid Bush supporters and who will reciprocate by knocking McCain out of the running early:
#19
A point, if I may: a favor to Giuliani does not mean Kerik won't kick ass in the job. They are not mutually exclusive... in fact, if they were, it would make Giuliani an real asshole for recommending him - which I do not buy for a second.
I think Kerik will get a shot and prolly do a good job - hell, he may just kick ass - there is nothing on the record to suggest otherwise, merely speculation and such.
And speaking of kicking ass... I think knocking McCain in the head is a wonderful idea. I will happily buy Giuliani a Louisville Slugger of any length and weight he desires, should he wish one for the job. I think drilling him like a 70mph Class-A "fastball" right into orbit would be nice.
#20
If the Washington Post or the New York Times or CBS said it was going to be bright and sunny tomorrow - I'd bring my umbrella to work. Their credibility is zero. They're just the PR Dept for the Democratic Party.
It could never happen here. Genocide, ethnic cleansing, slavery, segregation, these are moral failings of lesser cultures. While we in the West may have once indulged in such behavior, we've evolved beyond such things. We're too civilized, too enlightened by reason to ever again succumb. Or so we like to think.
Maybe we should think again. From the Netherlands, once the epitome of civilized tolerance, comes the revelation that one of the country's top hospitals, with the blessing of the Dutch judicial authorities, has been conducting a sort of medico-legal experiment in neonatal euthanasia. And at one of the most prestigious universities in our own civilized States, the man considered by some the most influential living philosopher, teaches that those neonates are less deserving of our concern than animals.
At first glance, a few Dutch mercy killings and the academic musings of philosopher seem far removed from the crimes against humanity that occur in less "enlightened" corners of the world. The intent of the Dutch, after all, is to eliminate suffering, not to cause it. And philosopher/ethicist Peter Singer doesn't advocate genocide, slavery, or segregation -- he simply believes that our moral compass should be guided by utilitarian principles, not religious ones. But on further inspection, there is a commonality between the Dutch, the Princeton professor, the Sudanese, the Serbs, and everyone who would subjugate others. That commonality is the subjective judgment that some lives are less worthy than others.
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Posted by: tipper ||
12/09/2004 4:12:50 AM ||
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My sister's med school class was at an ethics lecture with a visiting speaker. He was going on about how spina bifida babies should not be saved. Only at the end did one of my sister's classmates inform him that she (the classmate) had spina bifida, a fact which the rest of the class knew. Guess she wasn't worth the effort of saving, though.
People forget that Nazism started with just this type of euthenasia of "defective" babies. It never stops there. It's just that the choice of whom to whack next varies according to cultural preferences.
Posted by: Kathy L ||
12/09/2004 6:09 Comments ||
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subjective judgment that some lives are less worthy than others This is the oldest debating trick in the book. Accuse your opponent of the most obvious flaw in your own argument. A Utilitarian would argue that there are always choices to be made and we should rationally choose the alternative that does the most people, the most good. A utilitarian given the choice between expending resources to save one child with a terminable disease and expending the same resources to feed a child in the Sudan, would choose the latter. In practice you could feed hundreds of Sudanese children for the cost of treating one terminally ill baby in the West.
#5
I don't know who the speaker was and I can't remember what she said about his reaction. I just remember thinking that it was all very ironic.
#4 - I understand the point, but I think it's a false dilemma. And although a "true" utilitarian would describe it as you said, in practice it always seems to work out more as the "some lives are less worthy than others."
Posted by: Kathy L ||
12/09/2004 15:15 Comments ||
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On the night of Nov. 28, 2001, crack homicide detectives fanned out all over New York City, one of them even going as far as New Jersey. In all, five detectives from the Manhattan South Homicide Task Force went to the homes of various suspects, fingerprinted some of them, interrogated all of them and told a few that they would have to take lie detector tests. The horrific crime? The police commissioner's friend was missing some items. The commish at the time was Bernard B. Kerik, who just the other day was nominated by George W. Bush to be the next head of the vast Department of Homeland Security. The crime victim was Judith Regan, a publisher at HarperCollins, whose imprint, Regan Books, was publishing Kerik's autobiography, The Lost Son. .... The Manhattan South homicide cops were working for Kerik. Regan's items apparently went AWOL from a studio at Fox News Channel, where she also worked. They included a cell phone, a necklace and a credit card. All the items were later accounted for. The necklace was found at the bottom of her handbag. The credit card had been left behind at a drugstore. As for the phone, it was later found in a trash basket ....
